The French You'll Read in Your First Month in France

Most "French for moving to France" lists teach you to ask where the station is. Useful, but it is not what fills your first month. What fills it is paper and screens: a lease to sign, a deposit to pay, a CAF account to open, an appointment at the préfecture, a bank form, a notice that a registered letter is waiting for you. Each one is written in a French that even good learners find hard, because it is built from words that assume you already know how France works.

If your worry is that you will arrive and feel lost, or that the French you studied will not be enough once the paperwork starts, these are the words to learn first. Here they are, grouped by where you will meet them. For each one: what it says, and what it means for you. Where a word is often misused, we say so.

1. Renting a Flat (le logement)

• Le bail: the lease. New official lease templates apply to leases signed from 1 October 2026 (service-public.fr).
• Meublé / vide: furnished / unfurnished. A furnished flat must contain a minimum list of items set by law (bedding, a hob, a fridge and so on), with a signed inventory.
• Loyer CC / HC: rent charges comprises (including service charges) or hors charges (excluding them). Les charges are the building and service costs paid on top of the rent. Always check which one an advert shows.
• Le dépôt de garantie: the deposit, held against unpaid rent or damage and returned at the end, minus any lawful deductions. People often call it la caution, and service-public says that is wrong (F31269).
• La caution / le garant: in law, a caution is a guarantor, a person or a body who promises in writing to pay if you do not. Garant is the everyday word. Visale, from Action Logement, is a free guarantee (F31267). So when an agent asks for une caution, ask whether they mean money or a person.
• L'état des lieux d'entrée: the written record of the flat's condition, made together when you move in. The one made when you leave (de sortie) is compared with it to decide what comes out of your deposit. Read it carefully and note every mark (F31270).
• L'assurance habitation: home insurance. Tenants must have it, at least for risques locatifs (fire, explosion, water damage), and show proof when they get the keys (F31300).
• La quittance de loyer: a receipt for rent and charges paid. Your landlord must give it to you free if you ask (F35247). Keep them: they are also a proof of address.

2. Proving Where You Live

• Le justificatif de domicile: proof of address. For a residence permit file it must be under six months old: an energy, water, phone or internet bill, your lease or a rent receipt (F33052).
• L'attestation d'hébergement: if you live with someone, their dated and signed letter saying so, with a copy of their ID. Do not confuse it with the attestation d'accueil, a form from the mairie (town hall) for a non-European visitor's short stay.

3. The CAF

• La CAF (Caisse d'allocations familiales): the body that pays family benefits, housing aid and some income support (caf.fr).
• Les APL: strictly, the housing aid for conventionné housing, most social housing among it. In a private flat the aid you get is usually called ALS or ALF, but people say "APL" for all three (F12006). If you are a non-EU student, check before you count on it: since 1 July 2026, most students on a student visa or permit receive it only with a means-tested grant (bourse sur critères sociaux), with exceptions, for example students who work (caf.fr).
• L'allocataire: the person or household receiving, or asking for, a CAF benefit. That is you, in every CAF letter.
• Le numéro de dossier: your CAF file number, formerly called numéro d'allocataire. It is not your social security number.
• Les pièces justificatives: supporting documents. Every form ends with a list of them.

4. The Préfecture and Your Right to Stay

• La préfecture / la sous-préfecture: the State's office in each département, and its branch in a smaller district. They handle residence permits.
• Le titre de séjour: residence permit, needed for a stay of over three months (F39).
• Le VLS-TS (visa long séjour valant titre de séjour): a long-stay visa that works as a residence permit once you validate it online and pay a tax, within three months of arriving (F16162). Put that date in your calendar on day one.
• L'ANEF: the Interior Ministry's website for foreigners' procedures, where many residence permit requests are now made.
• Le récépissé: a temporary paper proving your permit application was filed. It lets you stay, and sometimes work, while you wait. If you applied online on the ANEF, you receive an attestation instead (F15763).
• L'OFII: the French immigration and integration office, which runs the integration contract for many non-Europeans settling in France.
• Une convocation / un rendez-vous: a convocation is an official summons with a date you must attend. A rendez-vous is an appointment you book yourself. A letter that says vous êtes convoqué(e) is not optional.

5. Health

• L'Assurance Maladie / la CPAM: national health insurance, and its local office. Its website is ameli.fr, so people also just say "ameli".
• La carte Vitale: your health insurance card.
• Le numéro de sécurité sociale (NIR): thirteen digits plus a two-digit key. If you were born abroad, it includes the code 99 and a country code (F33078).
• La mutuelle (complémentaire santé): top-up insurance for what the Assurance Maladie does not cover. Not compulsory for individuals, but employers must offer one (F20314).
• Le médecin traitant: the family doctor you declare. Without one, you are reimbursed less.
• Une ordonnance: a prescription.

6. The Bank

• Le RIB (relevé d'identité bancaire): the slip with your account details. You will be asked for it often. Your IBAN is the account number printed on it.
• Un prélèvement: a direct debit, taken by the company you owe, with your signed SEPA mandate. Many regular bills are paid this way (F20752).
• Un virement: a transfer you send yourself.
• Un chéquier: a chequebook.

7. The Mail

• L'avis de passage: the slip left in your letterbox when a registered letter or parcel could not be delivered. You can choose a new delivery or a pickup point online; otherwise it waits at your post office. Bring your ID (La Poste).
• La lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception (LRAR, or just "AR"): a registered letter whose receipt is signed by the person who gets it. Formal notices, such as ending a lease, are often sent this way.
• À retourner avant le…: return before the date given. In a French letter, the date is the most important line.
• Madame, Monsieur: the standard opening when you do not know who will read it. Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées: the standard formal sign-off. Agréer means to accept kindly, and it is the polite closing of almost every official letter.

Our guide to understanding French mail goes through whole letters, line by line.

8. Signs, Shops and the Street

• Tirez / Poussez: pull / push.
• Horaires d'ouverture: opening hours. Fermeture hebdomadaire: the shop's weekly closing day.
• Sauf riverains: except residents, the people who live or work on that street. Under a no-entry sign, it means only they may drive in.
• Défense de… / Interdit: forbidden. Défense de stationner: no parking.
• Les soldes: the official sales, in two national periods a year (economie.gouv.fr).
• Les jours fériés: public holidays. Eleven nationally, thirteen in Alsace-Moselle (F2405). Check opening hours around them.
• Composter: to stamp a paper ticket in the machine before you travel. It was dropped for TGV INOUI and Intercités trains in 2023, depends on the region for TER trains, and never applies to e-tickets.

9. Taxes and Other Offices

• La taxe d'habitation: abolished for main homes since 2023, and still paid on second homes (F42).
• La taxe foncière: property tax, paid by the owner, never by the tenant. The only part a landlord can pass on to you is the bin tax, the TEOM (F59).
• L'avis d'imposition: your yearly tax notice, from impots.gouv.fr. Landlords often ask for it.
• France Travail: the public employment service, called Pôle emploi until 1 January 2024. Older forums still use the old name.
• La mairie: the town hall, for civil status papers, local services and the attestation d'accueil.

For more of this vocabulary, from Cerfa forms to the dossier itself, see our guide to French administrative vocabulary.

Why a Word List Is Not Enough

You can learn every word above and still be lost the first time a real letter arrives. The words are rarely what trips you up. What trips you up is what sits behind them: why a deposit is called the wrong name, why the date matters more than the greeting, why a convocation is not a suggestion. That layer is France itself, and you pick it up by reading French about France, a little every day, before and after you arrive.

Better French is built for that layer. It helps you understand France, and your French gets better along the way, because you read the real thing with help on the words you tap. Every day it picks fourteen stories from 40+ French sources, rewritten once in clear French, across sections like Daily Life, Housing, Health and Education. When a story about rents or benefits uses a word you do not know, tap the word or phrase and Better French Context gives you the meaning, how it works in that sentence and, where it needs one, the cultural note behind it, explained in English, French, German or Spanish. Here are the notes it gave on a story that ran in Better French on 3 September 2026, « Encadrement des loyers : 4 annonces sur 10 ne respectent pas les prix légaux en France »:

Encadrement des loyers: « Law limiting the maximum rent for housing. » Cultural note: « Started with the 'loi ALUR' in 2014. »

le plafond légal: « Maximum limit authorized by prefectural decrees. » Cultural note: « Reference rents vary by neighborhood and year. »

Save it, and the word keeps the story you met it in and its note. Then three games turn the story into practice: Quiz Me asks three questions on it, VocaMatch teaches you the vocabulary from what you read, the story's real words and expressions, at your level, and Breakdown has you rebuild a key sentence one word at a time. If you search the archive for a topic like housing, older stories come back too. And on the days you only need to know what happened, Read in Your Language flips the story into English.

It will not fill in your forms for you. It makes the French on them familiar before the day you need it. If you are also preparing for a residence card, read our guide to B1 French for the 10-year card, and for the wider picture of daily life, living in France with the language barrier.

Arrive Knowing the French Around You

Fourteen French stories a day about life in France, rewritten in clear French. Tap a word like dépôt de garantie or préfecture for its meaning and the cultural note behind it. Better French is a subscription and it starts with a free trial. It works out at under €5 a month, and the exact price for your country is shown in the app before you pay. On the App Store and Google Play.

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